Hank

He'd always hated the name. Stupid archaic name from a past so far gone, trying to redeem a present so sullied that the name could never avoid being tainted by association. 'Born from honorable stock, you were' his dad would say when ever Hank scowled during the manifold introductions he was subjected to in his youth. Aaron Joseph Jacob Riley Hank Stevens, as it ran in long form. The fourth name was usually the father's, the fifth, if a family was prominent and presumptuous enough to bestow the honor of a fifth name on the heir apparent, was most often the given name - the name the offspring was expected to go by. To assume a nick name or prefer one of the initial three, which came from the previous three generations, was social and filial blasphemy.
Hank was the name of a progenitor that was credited with saving one of the Five Tablets. True enough it was only the fourth tablet that he saved, but any association with preserving the powerful and revered tablets would be helpful for a family that was maneuvering to recapture their place in the powers that be.

As soon as Hank came of age and became the primary orchestrator of the family fortune, he had a communicate electrode sent to every living blood relative of the name of Stevens, subconsciously conditioning them to call him Aaron - the name of the progenitor that he admired most. Great great granddad Aaron was the first rational male Hank hand ever met, and, so far, the only. Nobody knew that Hank has done this. As far as anybody was consciously aware, he had always been Aaron. Communicate electrodes were expensive, invasive, and risky but very very thorough. They messed with current memory and scribbled over anything the sender wanted the receiver to forget. Fortunately, for Hank, they were illegal, rarely used, and completely confidential.

Unfortunately for Hank, this was the only name Selia knew to call him. It still baffled him how she had even heard it in the first place. She was an Other, not under the jurisdiction of the Five Tablets; nor was she associated with the insert some kind of female association here. Where she came from was still a mystery. How she ended up at the furthermost edge of his family's holdings wearing nothing but a floor length white silk chemise and clutching the family's patence in her powerful ivory hands was even more so. But the greatest mystery of all was how she recognized Hank, addressed him by his full formal title, handed him the patence and fainted.

Work in Progress

Twenty white doors slammed shut at the stroke of ten. Forty pairs of manacles clicked tightly against eighty wrists and ankles. No sound other than the low humming of bulb filaments could be heard through all of V ward. The residents here were long past the screaming phase. Silence filled the empty spaces in every room on this floor of the Manor.

In room seventeen Sabrina Marmot clenched her fists into tight balls, digging jagged fingernails into fleshy palms. She pressed harder until she could feel a warm trickle of blood, an indication that she was still alive. Twelve inches above her face swung the pendant her mother had given her before running off with Hank. It was supposed to give her a sense of calm and contentment. Instead she swallowed hard to keep the bile of hatred contained in the pit of her stomach. After six days at Rhybook Manor her temperament had not improved. She was still too hostile.

Three minutes elapsed since the doors slammed shut. Only one hundred twenty seconds more until the needles came. Sabrina had read many books about women that could fight off substances designed to put the body to sleep. She figured if she concentrated hard enough, she too could overpower the drugs that would soon be coursing through her bloodstream. There had to be a way to fight back, especially since that was what “they” told her not to do.

Time was up. From the wall behind her head a thin robotic arm maneuvered a syringe full of clear liquid directly over her heart. Sabrina watched the arm lower a needle slowly towards her chest. If she moved, the needle would miss its mark, triggering four other needles full of strange liquids to randomly pierce her body, setting off alarms that would call in the nurse. She didn’t want a repeat of nurse Jim coming to her again, so she remained very still. The needle slid into her flesh with a pinch. A warm, tingly sensation began to overtake her body and she fought desperately with her mind to shut out the effects of the drug. Her eyes darted furiously around the room seeking for something, anything to focus on, but the only thing to see was the pendant, swaying back and forth.

Her body convulsed, pulling up hard against the strap around her middle. She hadn’t remembered being strapped like this before, and wondered how she had missed it. Her body slumped back to the table and she wondered what had changed. Suddenly her head was pushed to the side by one of the mechanical arms just as her stomach heaved. All of her dinner was expelled from her mouth and nose in a burning stream. Another mechanical arm swept the mess away from her face, scraping her nose and lips with hard nylon bristles. A jolt of electricity passed around her middle and her jaws clenched down hard. Another push to her head and the remaining contents of her stomach were released. A dark mist began to envelope her mind so she sucked in lungs full of air hoping the oxygen would clear the haze.

Sabrina could almost hear her ragged breath above the whir of the cleaning machines. Her chest heaved and she silently prayed for release from the shocks and drugs. She closed her eyes and tried calming her heart. The door slid open. Two sets of footsteps squeaked towards her bed.

“Ansel, what the heck is going on in here? I thought I told you to reconfigure that machine after dinner so this wouldn’t happen again!”

“I…well, I thought this was the machine I reconfigured.” The voice closed in on Sabrina’s left, almost at ear level. It was a wet voice, and she could almost feel the slippery words leave drops of spit on the side of her head. “I just don’t understand how I could have missed the room number again.”

“You’re getting sloppier every day. If our clients knew how often you screwed things up I would be in court for the rest of my natural life!” At the word natural he snorted and Ansel shivered as he shot a glace at the unnatural figure of the man towering over him.

“Well Jack, you’re not much help.” The words practically slopped out of his mouth and Sabrina imagined him wiping away a large glob of saliva with the back of his hand. “You walk around this place as if everyone and everything should bow at your feet.”

“They should.” Jack’s voice was cold. Ansel kept his distance from the doctor and continued to meddle with the machine above Sabrina’s head. She wondered if they could tell she was awake.